Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Disruption of Status Quo May 1
By Henry Goldman and Esmé E. Deprez - Apr 29, 2012 9:00 PM PT
Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.
In New York, Occupy Wall Street will join scores of labor organizations observing May 1, traditionally recognized as International Workers’ Day. They plan marches from Union Square to Lower Manhattan and a “pop-up occupation” of Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, across the street from Bank of America’s Corp.’s 55-story tower.
“We call upon people to refrain from shopping, walk out of class, take the day off of work and other creative forms of resistance disrupting the status quo,” organizers said in an April 26 e-mail.
Occupy groups across the U.S. have protested economic disparity, decrying high foreclosure and unemployment rates that hurt average Americans while bankers and financial executives received bonuses and taxpayer-funded bailouts. In the past six months, similar groups, using social media and other tools, have sprung up in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Pooling Resources
The Occupy movement in New York has relied on demonstrations and marches around the city since Nov. 15, when police ousted hundreds of protesters from their headquarters in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, where they had camped since Sept. 17.Banks have pooled resources and cooperated to gather intelligence after learning of plans to picket 99 institutions and companies, followed by what organizers have described as an 8 p.m. “radical after-party” in an undetermined Financial District location.
“If the banks anticipate outrage from everyday citizens, it’s revealing of their own guilt,” said Shane Patrick, a member of the Occupy Wall Street press team. “If they hadn’t been participating in maneuvers that sent the economy into the ditch, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
Police Prepared
New York police can handle picketers, according to Paul Browne, the department’s chief spokesman.“We’re experienced at accommodating lawful protests and responding appropriately to anyone who engages in unlawful activity, and we’re prepared to do both,” he said in an interview.
About 2,100 Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York have been arrested since the demonstrations began, said Bill Dobbs, a member of the group’s media-relations team.
Organizers describe the May Day events as a coming together of the Occupy movement, with activists also calling for more open immigration laws, expanded labor rights and cheaper financing for higher education. Financial institutions remain a primary target of the protests.
“Four years after the financial crisis, not a single of the too-big-to-fail banks is smaller; in fact, they all continue to grow in size and risk,” the group’s press office said in an April 26 e-mail.
Planning Since January
Five banks -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America, Citigroup Inc. (C), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) together held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, compared with 43 percent in 2006, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve.Occupy Wall Street began planning for May Day in January, meeting in churches and union halls with a decision-making system that avoids a single leader. Instead, participants rely on group “break-out” sessions in which clusters discuss such tasks as crowd-building, logistics and communications.
About 150 attended an April 25 meeting at the Greenwich Village headquarters of the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union, making last-minute preparations for how to deploy legal and medical help; site selection for picketing; purchasing, production and distribution of protest signs; and how to talk to reporters.
The meeting convened inside the union hall basement, where attendees arranged chairs in a circle as three facilitators asked each of the assembled to identify themselves by first name and gender -- he, she or they. Most appeared under age 30, though gray-haired baby boomers also participated. One of the older attendees pulled a ski mask over his head to protest the presence of a photographer from Tokyo.
Raging Musicians
Tomorrow, beginning at 8 a.m. in Bryant Park, scheduled events include teach-ins, art performances and a staging area for “direct action and civil disobedience,” such as bank blockades.Tom Morello of the Grammy Award-winning rock band Rage Against the Machine along with 1,000 other guitar-playing musicians will accompany a march to Union Square at 2 p.m., according to the maydaynyc.org website. That will be followed by a “unity rally” at Union Square at 4 p.m.; a march from there to Wall Street at 5:30 p.m.; and a walk to a staging area for “evening actions,” which organizers at the April 25 meeting said would be the so-called after-party.
Golden Gate Bridge
Occupy-related events are planned in 115 cities throughout the U.S., from college towns such as Amherst, Massachusetts, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Philadelphia.In San Francisco, demonstrators intend to hold a rally at the toll plaza of the Golden Gate Bridge from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. local time that “will result in the shutdown,” according to their website.
Across the bay in Oakland, protesters said they intend morning marches on banks and the Chamber of Commerce, followed by an afternoon rally and a march downtown.
“We’re looking forward to vigorously asserting our constitutional right to protest and giving a loud outcry about Wall Street and greed,” Dobbs said. “We’re hoping this will make a splash. We hope it will bring a lot of more people into the Occupy movement.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.net; Esmé E. Deprez in New York at edeprez@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at smerelman@bloomberg.net
End quote from:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-30/occupy-wall-street-plans-global-disruption-of-status-quo-may-1.html
Though I think the Occupy People are well meaning I'm not sure what this will do but draw more attention to the problems of most people around the world. And maybe that's a good thing.
I've noticed that most people simply want to escape the real problems of the world. However, until enough people actually face our problems and design a workable solution to our problems there will tend to be ongoing chaos in all the realms not properly understood by people escaping the most important problems of ongoing civilization existing here on earth. I think the following concept will work if enough people are capable of embracing it,
"There are no problems only Opportunities!"
When you refuse to see problems as problems they become opportunities no matter what they are.
Let me show you how it works:
You don't have a job
Look for work
if you can't find work
Then do something else
Try something new
If you are hungry
Go find some food
If you are sick
Go to a hospital
If you are lonely
Go and make a friend
See. There are really no problems. Problems is only one way to look at life. Try this. When you try to speak about your problem don't define it as a problem instead talk about it as an opportunity and see what your mind does. You mind instead of recoiling in depression suddenly starts to think, "Wow! What can we do now that is interesting?" What new idea or opportunity can we move on? If you refuse to see your life as problems then you won't be depressed. Being depressed is just allowing yourself to get lost in your problems. But if you redefine your problems as opportunities then you let go of your depression and see things completely differently.
Someone gave me this secret to life when I was 46 and I was going through a really terrible divorce. It completely changed my life. I went from no life to a really wonderful life just by refusing to see my life as a problem and only allowed myself to look at every aspect of my life as an opportunity. When I did this my life only became infinite opportunities. Was it still hard? Yes. It was. But it went from being unsurvivable to survivable. That is the real difference to looking at life this way. If you want your life to be survivable you have to always be open to seeing all the wonderful opportunities that life is bringing to you every single day.
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